Love fact-checking? Join Poynter and PolitiFact’s online fact-checking festival

Calling all fact-checking aficionados: The second annual United Facts of America online festival kicks off at the end of September.

United Facts of America will be live-streamed from Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27, 28 and 29.

The three-day online festival of fact-checking, hosted by PolitiFact and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, will feature discussions with experts in media, politics, technology and counterintelligence. 

REGISTER FOR UNITED FACTS OF AMERICA HERE >> Use the code "FACTS2022" for 50% off your ticket!

Keynote speakers for the event include:

• Judy Woodruff, anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour

• Jonathan Rauch, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

• Donie O’Sullivan, CNN correspondent covering the intersection of politics and technology

• Eric Deggans, veteran media analyst and NPR’s first full-time TV critic

• Dr. Jack Resneck, president of the American Medical Association

PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman and Managing Editor Katie Sanders will host the festival from Gray Television studios in Washington. The event will feature leaders of Poynter and PolitiFact’s teaching, reporting and executive teams, including Poynter president Neil Brown and PolitiFact Editor-in-Chief Angie Drobnic Holan. Kaiser Health News, PolitiFact’s reporting partner, is co-sponsoring the event.

Fact-checking editors from Reuters, Agence France-Presse and USA Today will discuss themes around the midterms and online misinformation. Reporters from the Los Angeles Times and Miami Herald will elaborate on how misinformation affects Hispanic communities.

Joan Donavan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, will discuss the new book "Meme Wars," which explores how far-right conspiracies went from online to real life. Donovan will be joined by co-authors Emily Dreyfuss and Brian Friedberg.

From the online world, the event will feature Peter McIndoe from the Birds Aren’t Real movement and Drew Comments, aka Andrew Bullock, whose catchy videos debunking COVID-19 vaccine myths have gone viral.

This virtual festival is for everyone interested in fact-based expression, civic engagement and the role of facts in a free society.

General admission tickets are $50 and can be purchased at unitedfactsofamerica.com/register until the last day of the event, Sept. 29.

Live in the Washington, D.C. area? VIP tickets will receive entry to the festival and an invitation to an in-person conversation in D.C., with author and CNN legal analyst Joan Biskupic on Sept. 28. VIP tickets are $75 and can be purchased through Sept. 21.

The full agenda, with speakers, is here.